Writing Excuses Take on Batman: The Dark Knight

I listened to Writing Excuses the other day with Abinadi, and they spoke about the characters in The Dark Knight. Specifically, who is the protagonist, who is the antagonist, and who is the relationship character?

Before I listened to it, Abinadi told me the gist and I disagreed. I agreed after having listened to it, but I offer these roles to complement the roles Lou Anders talked about:

Protagonist: Batman

Antagonist: Joker

Relationship Character: Alfred

Not a huge revelation, right? I mean, it’s evident from the trailer that these characters fill these roles. Batman wants order, the Joker wants chaos, and Alfred had been there before to tell Batman to burn down a forest to catch one criminal (which, by the way, was so well done with Batman breaking his ethical code and several laws to catch one criminal).

But that is what’s so great about the story of the Dark Knight: Characters fill more than one role. There are multiple stories going on, and they don’t feel like a sitcom A Story and B Story. It was hard for me to see Lou Anders’ point until I heard him explain it, and that goes to show just how good of a job they did on the movie.